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Saturday, September 28, 2013

late grape harvest

These are my late grapes. This is the first year that I have had late grapes. The grape arbor on the farm has four posts and each has a grape vine planted near it and the vines go up on to the pergola. One grape vine has been planted longer than the others so it has been producing more grapes than the others. The grapes on that vine ripened a while back and I harvested those and posted about it here.

Last year the birds pretty much took the entire harvest as they discovered they were ripe before I did. That was bad planning on my part. This year something has changed. We had lots of birds this spring but now I hardly notice any in our yard. Not being much of a bird watcher i don't know if this is normal or unusual for this time of year. I do know that a few days ago there was a large raptor type bird circling over our yard and perhaps he or she has driven off the small birds. We have seen fewer snakes this year as well.

In prior years we have had very few grapes on the three younger vines. This year there was quite a few. The grapes pictures are what i could reach from the ground. There are more that are growing over the pergola that can be reached with a ladder. The two bowls above hold about ten pounds of purple grapes and six pounds of green grapes. I made juice out of about half of the purple grapes and that will be for more jelly.

The remaining purples and the greens are washed, destemmed and sitting in the freezer. I am hoping at some point in time to try to make a few bottles of wine from them. I have a sister-in-law Patty who moved to a house with grapes growing in the yard and she is planning to make wine so i am eager to hear about her experiences and whether she likes the equipment that she purchased. I think that having the grapes in the freeze allows me some time to do some research and make wine when i am ready.